ISCA GREENFIELD-SANDERS

The transformation of the original image through rearranging and reweighting details gives rise—in a similar way to the selective superimposition of memory—to a completely new image that becomes a conveyor of feeling among the visible details. When we view the paintings, our vague familiarity with the anonymous landscapes may seem paradoxical, as the original photographs are moments experienced subjectively by a third person. At the same time, however, this points to a kind of collective infusing of memory through the passage of time. Questions are raised about the texture of memory and the veracity of photography, as well as the influence of the medium itself on a retrospective, individual construction of memory. The artist emphasises: “My work is not personal; the memories are found, and the emotions imbued are universal.”

Consequently, sweeping mountain and coastal landscapes or beach scenes under blue skies are frequent motifs, corresponding to the countless photos captured in light-hearted mood in places that remain unnamed and could also have been, therefore, in our own past. Besides landscapes, close-ups of blossoming plants and wildflower meadows are another subject to which the artist has devoted herself for several years. Here, too, found snapshots and attempts to capture flowering meadows and floral abundance are the starting point for a painterly exploration—images, in other words, that photographically never come close to the optical impressions of the eye. In painting, the artist recognises the potential to express the motif’s inherent depth and changeability. Time becomes a magical ingredient here: the real landscape never resembles its image in the past, present or future, but is subject to permanent transience. Isca Greenfield-Sanders’ works, however, do not claim to reproduce the perceived reality suggested by the photographs: instead, each painting will remain a version of what was seen originally, as manifold and changeable in time and space as memory itself.

As part of this year’s edition of VARIOUS OTHERS, we are delighted to present prints by Isca Greenfield-Sanders in cooperation with Paulson Fontaine Press (Berkeley, USA), alongside new paintings and watercolours.